Begin with The San Telmo Incident
Enter the Golden Sea with a complete introductory adventure for one Game Master and four to six players.
Play using your preferred TTRPG system, or use the included optional 2d6 Resolution Bridge. No separate rulebook is required when using the Bridge.
GM material: the full adventure contains scenario spoilers. Player-facing handouts are included at the back of the Quickstart for printing or sharing.
Prefer to run it from the browser?
The full web edition has the whole adventure, a spoiler-safe player packet, printable handouts, a GM quick reference, and an Adventure Record that carries into Ash on the Ledger.
Run Adventure OnlineThe hook
A signal has failed at San Telmo, an inland cane estate reached from the port of Boca Serena, and the estate now sits behind a military cordon. Injured workers are being prevented from leaving, engineer Emilio Resa has disappeared, several authorities are converging, and the official account does not match the evidence.
The crew arrives intending to question witnesses, navigate rival authorities, locate Emilio Resa, prevent escalation, and decide what happens to the evidence. How much they accomplish, and in what order, is determined in play.
How San Telmo plays
San Telmo is built around incomplete information, competing interests, and mounting pressure rather than a single correct route through the adventure.
Prepared scenes are pressures, not a required sequence. Players may bypass, combine, reverse, or solve them in ways the GM did not anticipate, and a clever solution that outperforms the expected dilemma should be honoured.
Investigation gives the crew new options, but what they learn also causes other people to react. Authorities protect jurisdiction, witnesses protect themselves, factions pursue their own interests, and delay changes the situation.
The crew will eventually have to act without possessing every answer. At the end they decide what happens to Resa, the evidence, access to San Telmo, and the public account. There is no required ending. Custody, proof, access, public narrative, and authority can all resolve differently.
This is the core Mar de Oro play loop in miniature. Read How Mar de Oro Plays for the wider framework.
What's in the box
Designed for a three-to-five-hour session, the Quickstart includes everything a table needs to sit down and play tonight.
Paced for a single evening, with natural stopping points if you need to split across two.
Pregenerated crew with roles, ties to the estate, and independent reasons to reach the estate and find Resa.
Estate map, player handouts, clocks, evidence, and a multi-route clue web wired to the incident.
A complete introduction to the Golden Sea in a single session, with clean threads a GM can carry into a longer campaign of their own design.
System-neutral, table-ready
Mar de Oro is system-neutral, sometimes called system-agnostic. Play using your preferred TTRPG system, or use the included optional 2d6 Resolution Bridge. No separate rulebook is required when using the Bridge.
Adapting to D&D 5e, Pathfinder First Edition, Pathfinder 2e Remastered, or Forged in the Dark? The System-Neutral Adaptation ladder translates capabilities, scale, pressure, and consequences into your system of choice.
Content: colonial authority and exploitation, coercion, disappearance, imprisonment, industrial injury, religious and political pressure, and Source-related body horror. The Quickstart includes table-safety guidance.
Print it, share it with your table, and set the first scene at the cordon.
Edition note: the Quickstart PDF may refer to the former “Player’s Handbook,” now titled the Setting Guide. The Quickstart remains fully usable. Get the current Setting Guide.
What comes next
A free website adventure that picks up days after San Telmo in Boca Serena. Import your ending and play on.
The optional Mar de Oro 2d6 Resolution Bridge includes a small nod to the fiction-first resolution tradition associated with Apocalypse World. Mar de Oro remains an independent, system-neutral setting and is not affiliated with or endorsed by its creators.